head to head · open source
cognee vs endee
cognee has 30,848 GitHub stars, 3,066 forks, 495 open issues and last shipped yesterday. endee has 1,295 stars, 1,650 forks, 31 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. cognee leads on adoption by 2,282% (30,848 vs 1,295 stars). cognee is written in Python under Apache-2.0; endee is written in C++ under AGPL-3.0. cognee has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, endee 127%. cognee was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| cognee | endee | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 31K | ★ 1.3K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Python | C++ |
| Last push | 2026-09-19 | 2026-07-29 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.1K | ⑂ 1.6K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick cognee if
- You weight community size — 31K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick endee if
- You want the endee feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches C++
- You evaluated both and endee fits your workflow better
About cognee
Cognee is an open source AI memory platform for agents, released under the Apache 2.0 license and written in Python. It ingests data in any format and builds a self hosted knowledge graph that agents query to recall, connect, and act with full context across sessions. The project lives in the Python ecosystem, installs through standard package managers, and sits in the AI and machine learning infrastructure category alongside graph databases and context engineering tooling. A companion research paper, "Optimizing the Interface Between Knowledge Graphs and LLMs for Complex Reasoning" by Markovic et al., 2025, docu…
read the full cognee overview →
About endee
Endee is a C++ vector database and AI search and intelligence platform for teams that need dense, sparse, and filtered retrieval on up to one billion vectors from a single node, available as self hosted software under AGPL 3.0 or as a hosted service.
read the full endee overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is cognee or endee more popular?
cognee has 30,848 GitHub stars and endee has 1,295. cognee has the larger community by that measure.
Are cognee and endee free?
Both are open source. cognee is licensed under Apache-2.0 and endee under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between cognee and endee?
cognee is written in Python and endee in C++. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, cognee or endee?
Choose cognee if you want the larger community (30,848 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose endee if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.